Less than one year after the Dallas Mavericks traded away star guard Luka Doncic, they parted ways with general manager Nico Harrison, who helped orchestrate the deal.
Justifiable or not, Harrison was the scapegoat for a lot of the Mavericks’ struggles in his final months in the position, and amid their woeful start to the 2025-26 regular season, they cut him loose.
A lot of information that has surfaced since Harrison was let go points to the idea that he was in over his head as Dallas’ general manager. Perhaps no single tidbit better illustrates that he was in over his head than the report that he had a document where guard Jrue Holiday was in the very same trade target tier as superstar big man Nikola Jokic.
“There had always been signs that Harrison was underwater in his front office role,” Tim Cato wrote. “In the first years, front office executives around the league found it curious how difficult it was to reach him on the phone, league sources said, until more of those responsibilities were shifted to assistant general manager Matt Riccardi. Some trades were surprisingly pricy for the returns; others that likely would’ve been mistakes, like how Harrison attempted to deal two first-rounders for Kyle Kuzma, went unpunished despite Harrison’s best efforts. One team source recalls a document where Harrison placed Jrue Holiday within the same trade target tier as Nikola Jokic. While at Nike, Harrison’s role involved talent evaluation. But from the very first moment he was hired, several league sources say, there were questions whether those evaluations would translate to coherent team building.”
It’s unclear exactly how old the document from Harrison was, but he was the Mavericks’ general manager starting in 2021, and Holiday was never in the same stratosphere as Jokic from an impact standpoint for the entirety of Harrison’s time in the Dallas front office.
Jokic is arguably the top talent in the world and was the best player on a championship team not all that long ago in 2023. On the other hand, Holiday has long been an elite defensive player and underrated offensive talent, but he’s not the generational talent or nightly triple-double threat that the Serbian is.
As such, it’s really difficult to justify Harrison putting Holiday in the same trade tier as the three-time MVP.
Dallas will look to rebound from its disastrous commencement to the season with Harrison no longer in the fold, but it might need some of its premier players to get healthy for that to happen. Guard Kyrie Irving has yet to even make his season debut with the Mavericks, while big man Anthony Davis — the key piece of the return they got for Doncic — has been on the shelf for around a fortnight now thanks to a calf injury.
Forward Cooper Flagg has gone through his fair share of growing pains as a rookie thus far as well. He’s shooting just 26.2 percent from 3-point range.
